A few weeks before gunfire rang out on Banks Street in an ongoing dispute over an abandoned house, printed messages appeared in mailboxes, asking neighbors to take action.
"The man in charge of the property at 3217 Banks is Mr. Carlos Liriano," the leaflets read. "Please consider reaching out to him with a text or a call to request that he do something about the fact that the property has turned into a crack house."
They were signed: "a concerned neighbor."
Residents of Banks’ 3200 block weren't sure who distributed the notices, but they had some ideas. Tensions had simmered for months over the blue house. Since a group of gregarious day laborers moved out, a new crew had begun sheltering there. They frequently consumed drugs, relieved themselves in alleyways and left trash strewn across the stoop, neighbors said. One neighbor saw a fire in the backyard. Others noticed bikes, food and work equipment went missing.
"That earlier crowd, they were chill," said Javiron Thompson, an IT worker whose apartment shares an alleyway with the house. "But with these new faces, I come home and I wonder if my door'll be kicked in. Shit ain't sweet."
Neighbors petitioned the city for help, but little changed. One of the persistent complainers was a psychiatrist and named Bruce Lovelace who lives in an elegant bungalow across from the house, according to neighbors and public records.
Tensions over what seven of the block's residents agreed was a deepening crisis inside the house boiled over around 10:30 p.m. Saturday. Neighbors heard yelling outside, followed by a single gunshot — then screams for help. As a bloodied man staggered up the sidewalk, neighbors saw windows in the bungalow go dark. An onlooker dashed out and strapped a makeshift tourniquet around the man’s wound before an ambulance took him to University Medical Center.
Police arrived within minutes and surrounded the bungalow. Hours later, they led Lovelace out in handcuffs, arresting him on counts of aggravated battery and illegal use of a firearm. Inside, detectives found a loaded pistol with a spent casing in the chamber, according to an arrest report.
Questions about what led to the violence have reverberated along the block since Lovelace’s arrest.
Residents are unsure what’s next for the troubled property, whose plight evokes a battle playing out in cities grappling with endemic issues like blight, housing shortfalls and addiction.
Perhaps most troubling to some was the allegation that a neighbor, a martial artist and community mental health provider whose psychiatric focus was children and adolescents, had possibly resorted to what looked to them like an act of vigilantism.
"We were expecting things to escalate over there,” said Joy Watson, whose apartment adjoins the house on the other side of Thompson’s. “We thought the violence would come from within the house, not from another neighbor.”
A sign hanging from a window at a house on Banks Street where a shooting occurred on Saturday, May 23, 2026. Police said a psychiatrist who lives across the street had become increasingly angry with conditions there, and arrested him for shooting a man who neighbors said had been living at the blighted home.
STAFF PHOTO BY JAMES FINN
Lovelace, who records show bonded out of jail on Tuesday, did not respond to emails, and a person who answered his door on Sunday declined to speak to a reporter. His attorney, Kevin Boshea, and the clinic where he works, Metropolitan Human Services District, did not answer multiple inquiries.
A Tulane spokesperson, Mike Strecker, said Monday that Lovelace had been placed on administrative leave at the university “pending further review of the facts in this case.”
Police records and interviews with neighbors suggest Lovelace had grown increasingly frustrated about the property’s state in the weeks before the shooting. An arrest report said he called police on the house multiple times since April. Two neighbors said they saw Lovelace poking around on the house’s front stoop before Saturday.
The shooting victim, a 40-year-old man, survived the encounter. He told detectives that the dispute touched off when a tall man walked up to the house and tossed a cup of gasoline onto the porch. A “verbal altercation” turned physical, and the gun fired as they tumbled down the steps.
Ongoing struggles
New Orleans officials have taken increasingly aggressive steps to address blight and homelessness in recent years. City crews bulldozed in the past several years. City and state agents rounded up dozens of homeless people in sweeps last year, including an operation in which people were bussed to a temporary shelter in Gentilly.
But in most cases, blight complaints follow a painstaking that can take months.
Compounding the challenges, New Orleans’ Office of Homeless Services — along with some blight reduction programs — amid an ongoing effort to right size the city’s budget. Some support services have .
"I just feel like this happened because these people are being pushed to the edge of society," Levonne Czako, a barista who lives in Watson’s building, said on Sunday.
In the weeks before the shooting, Banks Street residents emailed complaints about the property to City Councilmember Lesli Harris, whose office sent the complaints along to city code enforcement officials. A city spokesperson said an inspector visited the property on May 5, but did not note significant violations.
Calls to police escalated sharply in May — many, apparently, from Lovelace: An NOPD detective who drafted his arrest papers wrote that of 10 calls about 3217 Banks since April, a majority came from someone named “Bruce.”
Complicating the response, no one seemed to know who owned the decrepit house.
Liriano, the man whose phone number appeared on leaflets distributed in the neighborhood, denied owning the property in a phone interview. He said his father had owned the house but had died, and that it had become part of a “very complicated” estate dispute.
“I am very sorry about what’s going on with the neighbors and, you know, the situation,” Liriano said.
‘I was more worried about the man with the gun’
Liriano blamed the police for deteriorating conditions at the property, saying officers should “go over there and arrest them all.” An NOPD spokesperson said the police are one of “multiple city agencies” who work to address blight and “unhoused subjects possibly creating a danger to the community.”
After a reporter contacted Mayor Helena Moreno’s office on Wednesday describing the shooting, a city spokesperson said the city sent a team of inspectors back to the site the same day and that a new report would be processed “expeditiously.”
Lovelace’s social media profiles show he is an enthusiastic martial artist who trained at a gym in Mid City. Along Banks Street, neighbors were shocked to learn he may have wielded a gun against someone.
Watson wondered why Lovelace may have taken a gun to confront a neighbor.
“After learning what happened," she said, "I was more worried about the man with the gun than what was going on in that house.”
The two-story house has been quiet since Saturday. The next day, a piece of yellow caution tape fluttered from the front railing. Paulie Jones, who rents an apartment in Thompson’s building, said he put it there after police removed crime scene tape in a bid to ward squatters off if they tried returning.
A leafy garden planted by one of the building's recent occupants remained out front. The door hung open, and a spray painted sign perched against a window. It read “MOVE OUT NOW.”
Staff writers Kasey Bubnash and John Simerman contributed to this report.